I understand that Bill Maher isn’t a reputable source, he is an entertainer. Ignore him and listen to Father Coyne, because he is the one who is the reputable source. At about 53 seconds he will give you a timeline encompassing when the scripture was written. That is the important part (for the purposes of this post) of the video. Here is our starting point.

What happened in between 2000 BCE and 200 AD? (I will do my best to provide sources that you can look up)

So perhaps a revision of my original claim is needed. The New Testament writers may have based their works off of people who actually knew a man named Jesus. However, as Dr. van Minnen has shown us, there has been a lot of scribal errors going into the writings. Since they were copied, or annotated, by other scribes it does not make them first hand accounts. Furthermore, I am sure that anyone reading this will be familiar with King James (the guy who organized the Bible as we read it today). He assembled the best scribes in order to translate the Bible from Greek/Hebrew/Latin into English.
*side note: before King James it was seen as heretical to translate the Bible into a common language (like English) because only the clergy was supposed to be able to read/interpret the Bible for the common people. In the Middle Ages the Church was horribly corrupt (indulgences are only one example).